Black on black racism – O racismo do negro contra o negro

For many years there has been a debate about the situation of blacks in the Western world. Some believe that the situation of blacks is due to slavery, covert and overt institutional racism that continues to deprive blacks of the opportunities reserved for their white counterparts. Others believe that blacks have the same opportunities as whites and that blacks themselves should be blamed for their inferior social position.

Regardless of which view a person believes to be correct, there is one thing that I believe to be true. After centuries of mistreatment, exclusion, objectification and imposed inferiority, many blacks themselves have internalized anti-black sentiments and self-hatred. I have seen this type of behavior throughout my life. Black people that hate things that are associated with black people. Some black people hate the natural texture of black people’s hair. Others hate extremely dark skin. This list goes on and on.

Last week in the city of Vitoria (located in the southeastern Brazilian state of Espirito Santo), a black domestic worker, Elza da Conceição dos Santos, was arrested and thrown in jail for the crime of racism. Dos Santos was accused of insulting a bus driver, also black, when she allegedly said, “Only a black could do something like this”. Dos Santos was irritated because the bus was already overcrowded and the bus driver continued to pick up passengers. According to dos Santos’s daughter, Fernanda, her mother’s words were misunderstood. According to Fernanda, her mother said, “with those black glasses on you can’t see what’s going on”, referring to the dark glasses that the driver wore. In Brazil, the phrase “It could only have been a black” is considered to be racist and highly offensive. A cook who also rode the bus testified in favor of the driver about dos Santos said. Dos Santos ended up spending three days in jail because of the incident.

These situations remind me of a guy I knew many years ago. When all of us were working, this guy would continuously refer to another guy as a “monkey”. He would draw a picture of a monkey on a cardboard box and write the other guy’s name under the drawing. Both of the guys were black. In the history of America and Brazil, the term monkey has always been used by whites as a pejorative term against blacks. What is sad is that this type of racist oppression is sometimes used by blacks against other blacks in a classic case of a black-on-black racism. This behavior is common in Brazil also. A black Brazilian woman described to anthropologist Jennifer J. Manthei the difference between a “mulata” and a “negra”. Using herself as an example, the woman said that when she is pretty, she is a “mulata”, when she is ugly, or a “real monkey” she is negra.

This is a shame.

In the case of dos Santos, it is impossible to really know what she said but, after being released from prison she said, “It was not racist. It could not be because I adore people of my color.” In the case of Cofield, the evidence can be heard in the video. Evidence or a lack of evidence doesn’t really matter. Black self-hatred is a reality. There are black people who say they love other black people but also hate blacks with very dark skin. There are those type of blacks who prefer blacks with lighter skin. There are black people that like brown and dark skin but hate nappy hair. As I have written previously, beauty standards in the black community also follow a European standard, thus the lighter the skin, the less curly the hair, the more attractive. Maybe this is what Malcolm X meant when he said that “We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves”.